The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic church based in Kerala, India. The Syro-Malabar Church is an autonomous particular church in full communion with the pope and the worldwide Catholic Church, including the Latin Church and the 22 other Eastern Catholic churches, with self-governance under the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO). The Church is headed by the Metropolitan and Gate of all India Major Archbishop Mar George Cardinal Alencherry. The Syro-Malabar Synod of Bishops canonically convoked and presided over by the Major Archbishop constitutes the supreme authority of the Church. The Major Archiepiscopal Curia of the Church is based in Kakkanad, Kochi. Syro-Malabar is a prefix coined from the words Syriac as the church employs the East Syriac Rite liturgy, and Malabar which is the historical name for modern Kerala. The name has been in usage in official Vatican documents since the nineteenth century.
The Synod of Diamper , held at Udayamperoor in June 1599, was a diocesan synod, or council, that created rules and regulations for the ancient Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast, a part of modern-day Kerala state, India, formally subjugating them and downgrading their whole Metropolitanate of India as the Diocese of Angamale, a suffragan see to the Archdiocese of Goa administered by Latin Church Padroado missionaries. This synod also introduced many Latin practices in the liturgy of the Saint Thomas Christians which they had been following from centuries. The forced Latinization and eschewal of the Eastern and local practices and beliefs led to a massive protest by Saint Thomas Christians known as Coonan Cross Oath and subsequent schism among them the by mid-17th century.
The Coonan Cross Oath, also known as the Great Oath of Bent Cross, the Leaning Cross Oath or the Oath of the Slanting Cross, taken on 3 January 1653 in Mattancherry, was a public avowal by members of the Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar region in India, that they would not submit to the Jesuits and Latin Catholic hierarchy, nor accept Portuguese dominance in ecclesiastical and secular life. There are various versions about the wording of oath, one version being that the oath was directed against the Portuguese, another that it was directed against Jesuits, yet another version that it was directed against the authority of Church of Rome
The Major Archeparchy of Ernakulam–Angamaly is a Majorarcheparchy and the See of the Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. Mar Cardinal George Alencherry is the present Major Archbishop, and until July 2022, Archbishop Mar Antony Kariyil CMI was the Vicar of Major Archbishop, responsible for the administration of the Majorarcheparchy. Kothamangalam and Idukki are the two suffragan eparchies of the archeparchy. Major Arch bishop is the head of the eparchy at the same time being the head of the Syro Malabar Church. The archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly occupies a prominent position in the history of the Syro-Malabar church. It was established as a Vicariate by the Bull Quae Rei Sacrae of pope Leo on 28 July 1896 Mar Louis Pazheparambil was appointed as the first figure apostolic, who assumed charge on 5 November 1896. Under the able guidance of Mar Pazheparambil, the vicariate begin to flourish. City of Ernakulam was chosen to be the location for The Bishop's house which was completed and blessed on 24 April 1900.
The Catholic Church in India is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Romanus Pontifex and the Curia in the Diocese of Rome. There are over 20 million Catholics in India, representing around 1.55% of the total population, and the Catholic Church is the single largest Christian church in India. There are 10,701 parishes that make up 174 dioceses, which are organised into 29 ecclesiastical provinces. Of these, 132 dioceses are of the Latin Church, 31 of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and 11 of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Despite the very small population that Indian Catholics make up percentage wise, India still has the second-largest Christian population in Asia after the Catholic Church in the Philippines.
The Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of Irinjalakuda-Kodungallur is a suffragan eparchy in the ecclesiastical province of the Metropolitan Syro-Malabar Catholic Archeparchy of Thrissur in Kerala state's Thrissur District, southern India.It is part of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (which follows the Syro-Malabar Rite, the Indian variant of the Syro-Oriental Rite.
According to apocryphal records, Christianity in India commenced in 52 AD, with the arrival of Thomas the Apostle in Cranganore (Kodungaloor). Subsequently, the Christians of the Malabar region, known as Saint Thomas Christians established close ties with the Levantine Christians of the Near East. They eventually coalesced into the Church of the East led by the Catholicos-Patriarch of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.
This is a timeline of the history of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in India.
Mar Sabor and Mar Proth, according to Syrian Malabar Christian tradition, were two Chaldean Assyrian bishops who landed in the port of Kollam by the help of a Nestorian merchant, Sabr Iso in 823 AD. The mission is said to have received permission from the then king of Kerala to build a church in Kollam.
Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar (1736–1799) is the author of Varthamanappusthakam (1790), the first ever travelogue in an Indian language. Also known as Roma Yatraa Varthamanapusthakam, it postulates that the foundation of Indian nationalism rests on the basic principle that India should achieve civic self-rule. Long before the debates on nationalism shaking the intellectual circles of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Thoma Kathanar offers a distinctive positionality as a minority Syriac Christian priest and subsequent administrator of the Archdiocese of Cranganore with transnational ties to Portuguese ecclesiology who nevertheless argues in favor of autonomous civic Indian governance.
Metropolitanate of India was an East Syriac ecclesiastical province of the Church of the East, at least nominally, from the seventh to the sixteenth century. The Malabar region (Kerala) of India had long been home to a thriving Eastern Christian community, known as the Saint Thomas Christians. The community traces its origins to the evangelical activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The Christian communities in India used the East Syriac Rite, the traditional liturgical rite of the Church of the East. They also adopted some aspects of Dyophysitism of Theodore of Mopsuestia, often inaccurately referred as Nestorianism, in accordance with theology of the Church of the East. It is unclear when the relation between Saint Thomas Christian and the Church of the East was established. Initially, they belonged to the metropolitan province of Fars, but were detached from that province in the 7th century, and again in the 8th, and given their own metropolitan bishop.
St. Thomas Cathedral is the Syro Malabar Catholic cathedral of the eparchy of Irinjalakuda in India got its present existence under the nomenclature and the Canonical Status as Cathedral in the Wake of the Origin of the New Eparchy. This was effected by the amalgamation of the two independent and important parishes of the locality, namely, St. George’s Forane Church and St. Mary’s church, which amicably situated side by side for about a century.
The Saint Thomas Christian denominations are Christian denominations from Kerala, India, which traditionally trace their ultimate origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. They are also known as "Nasranis" as well. The Syriac term "Nasrani" is still used by St. Thomas Christians in Kerala.
Gīwargīs of the Cross, also spelled Geevarghese of Cross and George of Cross, was an archdeacon (arkkadyakon) and leader of the Saint Thomas Christian community of India. He was the son of the elder brother of Giwargis of Christ. By the last year of Bishop Mar Abraham, he became the Archdeacon. After the Bishop's death in 1597, he led the Indian Church. He led the church amidst Portuguese intervention. The Synod of Diamper (1599) was held during his time. In 1601, Francis Ros became Bishop, appointed by the Archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Menezes. In the beginning there was cordiality, but the deliberate downgrading of Angamaly and the inertia of Bishop Ros frustrated him. When the Archdeacon protested, Ros excommunicated him. In 1615, the Bishop and Archdeacon reconciled each other, but again fell out later. The next Bishop, Etienne de Brito, also did not recognize the Archdeacon's ecclesiastical status. He led the church in a period of severe stress and turmoil, and held it together. After his time and his brother's time the root family of Pakalomattam became heirless. The only son shifted residence to Alappatt house. He is believed to have been buried in the forefront of Pakalomattam Thravadu (Kuravilangadu).
Mar Hormizd Cathedral, locally known as the Eastern Church of Angamaly or the Cathedral Church, is a Syro-Malabar church in Angamaly, India. It was created cathedral in 1577 by Mar Abraham, the last East Syriac Metropolitan to reach Malabar Coast. It is one of the oldest and is historically the most important of the three ancient Syrian churches in Angamaly. It is dedicated to Mar Hormizd, a seventh-century East Syriac saint.
Dom Francisco Ros, S.J (1559–1624) was the first Latin Archbishop of Archdiocese of Angamaly-Cranganore, the See of Saint Thomas Christians in the early modern Malabar in South India.
St Mary's Jacobite Syrian Soonoro Cathedral, also known as Angamaly Cheriyapally, is a Jacobite Syrian church located in Angamaly City. Built in 1564 by Archdeacon Giwargis of Christ, it is one of the most prominent and ancient Syriac Orthodox churches in Kerala. In the seventeenth century it was the residence of Archdeacon Thomas Parambil, who eventually got consecrated as bishop Mar Thoma I. It was the seat of the Archdeacon and later the Malankara Metropolitans, the local heads of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church and hence held an important position in the Church for many centuries.
Angamāly Padiyōla is a historic declaration of the Catholic (Paḻayakūṟ) Saint Thomas Christians proclaimed in 1787 at the Great Church of Saint George in Angamāly. This document made a strong appeal to the pope for the consecration of a native bishop for the community and demanded autonomy for their Church which was forcibly brought under the Latin Church's jurisdiction.
The Paḻayakūṟ (Pazhayakoor) or Romo-Syrians or Syrian Catholics of Malabar refers to the East Syriac denominations of the Saint Thomas Christian Church, which claim ultimate apostolic origin from the Indian mission of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century AD. The Paḻayakūṟ descends from the faction that remained within the Catholic fold and held fast to an East Syriac identity after the historic Coonan Cross Oath of 1653 while being part of the community seceded from the Portuguese Padroado. The modern descendants of the Paḻayakūṟ are the Syro-Malabar Church and the Chaldean Syrian Church. Among these, the former is an Eastern Catholic church in full Communion with the Holy See and the latter is an integral part of the Assyrian Church of the East, one of the traditionalist descendants of the Church of the East.
